Norfolk Canyon Overnighter Sat-Sun

[Mike Avery]

Crewed up with Doug, Steve, his son Adam, Lanie for an overnighter Sat-Sun (28-29 Jul 12). Hauled the boat the week before to get some maintenance items done like 100 hour service, impellers, waxing, zincs, etc. Trying to save $$ by doing it myself. My yamahas now over 2100 hours so got to keep up.

Put lines in on the fingers and trolled east to the 400 line @ 100 fa then turned towards the Norfolk Canyon. Couple of mystery bites, perhaps some wahoo who cut through a 130 fluro leader but never popped the clip nor pulled any drag. Troll bite sucked for sure.

Setup the night ops on the north wall of the canyon. Acres of pilot whales everywhere. Butters chunk line flowing good and I'm putting out the sword baits when a nice bull mahi grabs my squid at dusk and takes the squid but no hookup. Steve tosses a lure and I toss a squid strip on a circle hook and the mahi eats both and we both set the hook. We are not exactly sure who set the hook first so we counted this fish as both of ours.





Slow night fishing. Not much bait around the lights which is never a good sign. Watched storms form to the north and south of us but with XM weather we tracked them closely all night and never got close enough force us to move. We had to huddle at 3 am as one cell came about 20 miles north of us but it was moving due east so all was good. I would not want to overnight w/o XM weather as we saw lightning that was 90 miles away that looked much closer. One strong run around 1 am that might have been a good sword hit but pulled the hook.

Put the troll spread back out at 5 am hoping to catch the early morning bite but never happened. Did some deep dropping and found a nice class of BSB mixed in with the blueline tiles. Mostly keeper BSB with only a few throw backs. Kept 13 blueline tiles with Lanie and Steve getting a citation each. Could have limited out there but nobody wanted that much fish to clean in the heat. Boxed 30 keep BSB before heading back early to beat the heat.









I need more rod holders for the boat. We took out 19 rods to get everthing done on one of these trips.



Little pile of groceries for our efforts.

[ocnslr]

Pretty work, Mike. Always nice to have the "Plan B" option. Very nice BSB.

[crappie]

Good job Mike,Lanie and crew. Looks like everybody had some pullage and some good eats to go home with. Good to see all went well with the boat. We can do it.

[Keywes]

Nice tiles Mike! Pretty work as always.

[FinFan]

Mike,

Enjoyed the trip, company and the pullage. Definitely need a dozen or so more rod holders on the boat so we can bring some more rods, I think we had two rods for every hand on the boat!

see you on the water

[DAWGONIT]

Very nice!

[Seascritch]

Purdy work Mike! nice looking BSB!!! I LOVE them!!! No wrecks??

[coldwater]

Sure is fun cleaning all those fish (in the hot sun!). But getting them in the freezer is even better. I have them steaked up but still have to get them vacuum bagged. Doing that tonight. Great light show through the night. By the way I have to claim that bull Mahi !! Thanks for the trip, as always.